NY Times Editorial Board Hacked by The Onion

At least I think it was the Onion. Someone, anyway, got access to the Times Editorial Board computers and turned out this parody editorial on Obamacare:

Congressional Republicans have stoked consumer fears and confusion with charges that the health care reform law is causing insurers to cancel existing policies and will force many people to pay substantially higher premiums next year for coverage they don’t want. That, they say, violates President Obama’s pledge that if you like the insurance you have, you can keep it.

Mr. Obama clearly misspoke when he said that.

HaHaHaHaHa! President Obama misspoke 27 times! And curiously enough, when he misspoke it was the centerpiece of his argument for his supposedly signature legislative achievement! Even the Times editorial board wouldn’t try to sell that one; it’s got to be the Onion.

By law, insurers cannot continue to sell policies that don’t provide the minimum benefits and consumer protections required as of next year. So they’ve sent cancellation notices to hundreds of thousands of people who hold these substandard policies.

Sure! From now on you can pay extra for pediatric dental coverage, even if you don’t have any kids!

(At issue here are not the 149 million people covered by employer plans, but the 10 million to 12 million people who buy policies directly on the individual market.)

Here the Onion goes too far. It can’t expect us to believe that the Times editorial board is so ill-informed that it doesn’t realize we are talking about employer-sponsored group plans. As we wrote here, the Obama administration itself calculated, back in 2010, that more than one-half of all employer-sponsored plans will be dropped once Obamacare goes into effect. And that is just in the short term; in the long run, the Obama administration acknowledged that all current plans will be phased out and those covered by them will have to pay more, in some cases with help from the taxpayers or Chinese banks.

Still, every good parody goes over the top at some point. Well done, Onion!